Self-taught on a decade-old desktop, aiming for film scoring

A decade-old desktop, cheap wired headphones, no soundproofing and free audio software with limited functionality. That is the setup, as Austin Trischetti-Maldonado describes it, on which he composes. "I’ve been able to make it work," he says.

He is a self-taught composer at Catskill High School. Everything he has learned about writing music, from theory to notation to the quirks and timbres of every instrument, comes from his own research and practice, he says. He has played in school bands, but he comes from a small town with very limited opportunities for young musicians: no composition program, and no private instruction.

“Music allows me to turn ideas and emotions into something tangible that can exist beyond my imagination, while also allowing me to give something to my community”

Austin Trischetti-Maldonado

"Everything I know comes from countless hours of trial and error," he says.

Despite that, he earned a scholarship to attend the Eastern US Music Camp at Colgate University, studying music in a collegiate setting over the summer, and he has received regional honors for his work.

Giving something to his community, for him, includes performing at community-led or scholastic events.

The reason he composes reaches past himself. He wants to show the world that young people from small places with few opportunities, "especially young people with cultural backgrounds and all-too-frequently mispronounced surnames like mine", can compose, and that "we can compose in a way that gets the whole world to notice." "That we can be the next Justin Hurwitz or even the next John Williams," he says. He wants to write music that "tells stories that words alone cannot".

It started early. When he was a little kid, he says, nothing his parents could do would stop him humming a tune to himself 24/7. "No matter where I go, I see music," he says. "I see polyrhythms in each and every falling autumn leaf and in every car that passes me by on the thruway." "Truthfully, I am music."

After high school he intends to aim for a Master of Fine Arts in Film Scoring. He would be the first in his very extended family to receive a terminal degree, and the first in his immediate family to receive a degree of four or more years.

He also hopes, he says, to help others nurture their own love for music.